In Israel, raft of new laws shows rise of the right ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor by Joshua Mitnick - August 4, 2011 - 12:00am Critics say Israel is forsaking its democratic ideals with a right-wing agenda. Avishai Amir, a former spokesman in the left-wing Labor government of the 1990s, begs to differ. Take the recent nakba law, for example, which bans public funding for groups that mark Israel's independence day as Palestinians do: by declaring the creation of the Jewish state to be a nakba, Arabic for "catastrophe." » Read more

ISRAEL: Approval of 900 new homes in East Jerusalem draws ire ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Los Angeles Times by Edmund Sanders - August 4, 2011 - 12:00am Israel's Interior Ministry gave the final green light Thursday to the construction of more than 900 new homes in a Jewish development built on land seized during the 1967 Mideast war. Palestinians and anti-settlement groups said the Har Homa expansion, which has been working its way through Israeli regulatory agencies since last year, will occupy one of the last remaining undeveloped hillsides in the area and effectively cut off direct access between Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem and Bethlehem. » Read more